The end of the year and the beginning of another always brings a group of lists. The ten best, the ten worst, the biggest trends, the new year’s resolutions, the people who have left us. The one predictable thing about doing lists that predict future events in the year to come is that they are almost always uniformly wrong. Our best understanding doesn’t remotely approach the effect of unknown forces, inventions, human responses and the ignorance of actions that truly define what happens. We can look back and chuckle at our awkward expert ‘nonsense’ when placed against the reality of outcome. Pollster Frank Luntz, who is still churning data through focus groups in 2015, predicted in 2002 that the inevitable democrat party nominee to challenge George W. Bush for the presidency would be “Tom Daschle, Senate majority leader”. Tom Daschle who? Noble Prize for economics winner Paul Krugman, persisting as an outstandingly wrong way prognosticator for the New York Times, put forth this whopper in 1998:
“The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in “Metcalfe’s law”–which states that the number of potential connections in a network is proportional to the square of the number of participants–becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other! By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s.”
The predictions regarding science and innovation are particularly spurious. Take Microsoft Chief Technology Officer Nathan Myhrvold’s 1997 statement that “Apple as a company is already dead.” Apple of course is now worth three times the value of Microsoft.
Those of you who think the climate forecast can be accurately predicted a hundred years from now, might remember the 1970 Earth day predictions of University of California Davis Ecologist Kenneth Watt:
“The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.”
Not exactly, Kenneth. But, in fairness, even Nostradamus didn’t get it all right. So, Ramparts is too smart by half to suggest the future, but it is fun perhaps to describe some impressions and directions and see what happens – if we prove right, we told you so; if wrong, we can at least claim to be as clairvoyant as a Noble Prize winner like Krugman.
Trump-mania will be a spent force : This is a dangerous impression to start with, if our credibility is at stake. The polls would suggest the Donald Trump as a political force continues to grow ever more so and all attempts to derail have simply strengthened him. But actual elections are why we do not have a President Giuliani, Glenn, Connally, or Hillary Clinton 2008. Trump’s major weakness as a political figure versus political celebrity is Trump. His strength from day one has been his steadfastness as an anti-immigration candidate, and it will be his downfall. Trump, to stay consistent, has had to throw ever wider circles around his anti-immigration invectives that started as reasonable, if infeasible stands regarding the southern border, into progressively ludicrous statements regarding, well just about everything. Bellicosity works when you are convincing those who need no convincing, but as the field of competitors progressively narrows and you need to convince the skeptical voter, the ignorant, conflicting statements you espouse become a progressive problem. Trump needs victories or second place finishes in Iowa or New Hampshire, or bellicosity rapidly becomes a spent force.
2016 will be the ‘hottest’ year on record: It is the last year of the Obama administration and almost all the legacies, from Obamacare to World Peace, are coming to an ignominious collapse. The final legacy is global warming and the billions of dollars linked to securing this legacy demands that no matter what the weather, the measured year temperature will have to be the hottest ever. The industry of settled science demands the narrative be preserved, and so it will be. Put your thermostats away, next year’s temperature is already known, and it ain’t going to be reported going down.
Attendance at major sports venues will be trending down: Big sports and big money have permanently bonded and the direction is ominous for the entertainment value of sports. Ticket prices continue to climb, team loyalty is drying up as teams are leaving for far more economic markets, and television access for the average fan will soon be pay only. Instant replay is killing sorts spontaneity and sports as an omnivorous consumer of are youth is creeping down to the middle school level. When the venue becomes contrived, and the outcome progressively economically determined, sitting in the stands will be a thing of the past. Why bother to freeze to death, when your team has no chance and the game ticket costs a week of salary? If the teams’ make money, whether you are there or not, the die is cast. The money will not be made on tickets supporting your team, but progressively on the internet fantasy teams. Why be committed to a team when everyone’s players can be on your team?
Europe, America, and Russia will all see at least one major terrorist incident: This impression is one of the sadder, but easier, ones. Europe and America are still enthralled with the concept of Frances Fukuyama’s End of History argument and the tragedies that have befallen them since are predictable in that history does not suffer denial easily. Unfortunately, when it comes to philosophic world views, Huntington’s the Clash of Civilizations looks like the more insightful recognition of the world around us. Until the liberal democracies wake up to the threat building against them, they will be vulnerable and prone to the next outburst, and it won’t be a little one. Russia will suffer its tragedy because it is overextended as a world enforcer, at the precise time the homeland is vulnerable and weak, buffeted by stratospherically low energy prices that are the primary nutrient to its one asset economy. Putin’s need to appear invulnerable will only increase his vulnerability. Unfortunately, I think 2016 will be a good year for the bad guy.
The Arab Winter will claim at least one more government – Jordan, Egypt, or Saudi Arabia: Admittedly this is the most ‘out there’ impression, but the pattern has been established. The Arab Spring was the hope of the Middle East joining the modern world, but the early momentum collapsed into the dangerous chaos of the Arab Winter currently fanning out from the calamity in Syria. The ugly stepchild of the Arab Spring, ISIS, now threatens its Sunni providers in Saudi Arabia, and with the stalemate in Yemen and the collapse of oil prices, the sheiks are in a progressively intolerable vice. Their response to the absent American presence has been to build a league of 37 Sunni nations to ‘defeat terrorism’, but it is really pointed at their sworn enemy Iran, and one wonders if the forward projection will make them vulnerable from within. Jordan lives as long as Saudi Arabia can support it, and Egypt is at the same mercy. If the there is no American support, the edifice of power will likely collapse from within in one or more of these countries, and the Middle East will become an even more unstable place (if that’s possible).
The strong foreign policy candidate will win the 2016 American presidential election: The Trump phenomena reveals a progressive uneasiness in America regarding the future, and, God forbid, a significant terrorist event were to occur, that would seal the deal.The world abhors a vacuum and President Obama’s obsessive need to reduce America to an also ran, puts us squarely in the sites of those who would do us harm. The need for Hillary Clinton to tie herself to this progressively vulnerable foreign policy position will be her undoing, and it won’t be close if trouble occurs.
If Republicans do not win the Presidency, the party will split and cease as a national party: The wins of 2010 to gain the house and 2014 to gain the Senate have reflected back as a complete waste of effort to the conservative voter. The national party runs afraid of looking obstructionist and proved it again with a calamitous budget agreement that secured for President Obama and large business interests everything they wanted. The final strike of losing the Presidential election will be the third strike, and conservatives will never again associate themselves with a party of spending apologists. The threat that three parties will never knock the liberal agenda from power will be immaterial; the national Republican agenda has no respect for its base, and this with a loss, will be finally and justly reciprocated.
There I said it. And when you say it on the internet, you say it forever. Hopefully I’m no more accurate then the prognosticators that have had their impressions dashed upon the rocks of history. The negative nature of my future impressions deserve a real rock dashing. There just seems to be a sense that we are just hanging on, waiting for some sign that it is okay to be ourselves again, to be prosperous again, to be spiritual again, to be strong again as Americans. It won’t be under this sad wisp of a President. With a little luck, maybe we can survive his Presidency to thrive again under a truly positive force. America, it’s your last chance. Don’t be fooled by the demagogue or the liar. Anyone else, we got a chance.